http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6603-9483
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ABSTRACT
Theories of discrete emotions distinguish contempt from other negative emotions, and recent evidence shows that contempt toward candidates played a major role in two US Senate races in 2014. Contempt felt by respondents was the most significant emotion predicting voting against three of the four major party candidates, and had effects independent of other emotions, such as anger, anxiety, and hope. In the present paper, the 2016 Republican Iowa Caucus provides the opportunity to examine contempt in a different context: an intra-party primary campaign, where candidates share the important characteristic of party affiliation. We find that while voters perceived all leading GOP candidates as expressing at least some contempt, Donald Trump was seen as expressing the most contempt by far. Voters also felt contempt for at least some candidates of their own party. When they did so, it predicts significantly lowered probabilities of voting for Cruz, Trump, and Rubio, and increased probabilities of voting for one or more of their opponents. Implications of these findings for theory and research on the role of contempt and other specific emotions in voting behavior are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
David P. Redlawsk is James R. Soles Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations and the University of Delaware in Newark, DE. His research focuses on the role of information in voter decision-making and on emotional responses to campaigns. His newest book is The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning, with Kyle Mattes.
Ira J. Roseman is Professor of Psychology at the Camden, NJ campus of Rutgers University. His widely cited model of the emotion systems encompasses 17 emotions, including anger and contempt.
Kyle Mattes is Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida International University in Miami, FL. He publishes on negative campaigning, campaign strategy, and voter decision making. He is the author (with David Redlawsk) of The Positive Case for Negative Campaigning.
Steven Katz is a graduate student in the Psychology program at Rutgers University, Camden, NJ, studying the contributions made by specific emotions to political decision-making. His thesis examines the effects of emotions in political advertising.
ORCID
David P. Redlawsk http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6603-9483
Notes
7 Affective Intelligence Theory (Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen Citation2000) posits that positive and negative emotions are not just the ends of a single dimension, but represent discrete responses driven by two different internal systems. Anxiety, raised by the surveillance system, causes voters to learn; while enthusiasm, driven by the dispositional system, keeps voters engaged. In later work, Marcus et al. (Citation2006) show that a dimension of aversion (which includes anger) sometimes is distinct from anxiety, with different effects on voters. Accordingly, we asked about anger and fear (anxiety) as two separate negative emotions. Positive emotions are often thought to be unidimensional; we used hope, rather than enthusiasm, to reflect the nature of the campaigns. Contempt was not included in the 2015 survey, given its absence from Affective Intelligence Theory.
8 The original survey (in the field through much of October 2015) used a sample of prior-Caucus attendees drawn from (1) a list provided by the Iowa Republican Party, (2) a list provided by the Iowa Democratic Party, and (3) a random digit dial sample of Iowa registered voters acquired from SSI. The RDD subsample was used to capture new voters who had not previously caucused, and was cleaned to eliminate duplication with the other two subsamples. It and the post-Caucus survey were fielded by an academic survey centre [The Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling, Rutgers University], which programmed and administered the survey using CATI. Following the February 1 Caucuses, the post-caucus survey was fielded from 3 to 9 February 2016.
9 Our aim was to use question wording as similar as possible to the 2016 ANES. As that questionnaire had not yet been released, we used the available wording from ANES 2012. As it turned out, ANES modified the 2016 wording somewhat to focus more explicitly on emotions toward the candidate: “Think about [candidate]. How often would you say you’ve felt [emotion] because of the kind of person [candidate] is or because of something [candidate] has done … ?”
10 We have data on perceptions of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in the Iowa Democratic race, though it is not relevant for our examination of Republican Caucus attendees (respondents were only asked about their own party candidates in this primary election). Among Democrats in the post-Caucus survey (N = 273), Clinton and Sanders were each seen as expressing contempt by 39% of respondents, which was far below the 77% of GOP voters who saw it expressed by Trump, and also below percentages who saw Clinton and Sanders express anger (62% and 63%) and hope (85% and 79%). Contempt was felt in response to Clinton by 10% of Democratic voters, and toward Sanders by 6% (less than the percentages of Republicans feeling contempt in response to all GOP candidates other than Ben Carson). Democrats felt afraid (10% and 14%), angry (18% and 16%) and especially hopeful (79% and 71%) in response to Clinton and Sanders.
11 We compute racial resentment using three the questions from the standard scale (McConahay Citation1986) which measures “modern” racial attitudes toward Blacks. Personal economic situation was measured by asking if the voter was better off than a year before, reverse coded. Schaffner, MacWilliams, and Nteta (Citation2017) show that these two factors along with hostile sexism, played an important role in Trump's general election victory. Unfortunately, we did not measure hostile sexism.